Social media overload

Social media overload

Date:

Wed, 02/15/2012

Still learning Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn? Pinterest has come to take its own space on the web.

Facebook and Twitter have virtually taken over the world as text-based ways to communicate with the world. LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals. Google+ (Google “plus”) has worked to make sharing pictures, video, and other media easy, but the crowd hasn’t followed.

Then, Pinterest appeared. We realize you may be asking, “I need to learn something else?” No, you’re not required to do anything. But for those who want to interact with others online, Pinterest is a new social media outlet that might be worth your time. It creates a virtual bulletin board, connecting people with images they enjoy.

Less talk, more fun
You’re likely already on one, or a few, of the four sites previously listed, what does Pinterest have that the others don’t? Pinterest is social media on its head. Instead of typing about something and sharing that image, pictures become the focus and text is an afterthought on Pinterest.

For example, you can view our “boards” (boards are the name for categories of pictures) at www.Pinterest.com/HoardsDairyman. All you see is pictures. But if you click on Dairy Art, because you see something cool, you’ll see that we’ve provided quick descriptions of the pictures.

This leads to what looks “cool” being the focus, not what reads well. If you’re like many dairy producers we know, this may be preferred. If you join Pinterest, it will ask you to add a quick link to your Internet bookmark bar, called “Pin It.” If you are surfing the web, and see something cool (like we did when we saw Bonnie Mohr’s classic “Have Holsteins”) you can add the picture to your board, and save it for later.

One thing about Pinterest is that women rule. Women make up 97 percent of Pinterest’s Facebook fans. A recent seminar we attended said that women made up about 85 percent of Pinterest’s actual users. Why is this so? Are women more visual than men?

Actually, it may have more to do with what is shared on Pinterest. It was crafts, recipes, wedding advice, and house-shopping clicks that got the site rolling.

How can farm’s use Pinterest?
Pinterest integrates with Facebook very well. So farms may or may not want to check out its capabilities. Every additional social media site takes a little more time. But, being that Pinterest is heavily women-based (also our head grocery-shoppers, statistics show) it may be a place where dairy should make an effort. There already a few farms and dairy promotion groups online (along with Hoard’s, of course).